The Ones that Stay: Venezuelan Imaginaries of (Im)mobility
The classical view of mobility defines it as the “ease of movement” of individuals, capital, or goods (Sager 2006, p.466). However most of mobility research focuses on the practicalities of movement, the experiences of migrants, the migrant adaptation process, and policies. Instead, in this study I attempt to understand mobility through the discourses of three Venezuelan citizens that have decided to stay in the country despite socioeconomic crisis affecting the nation. Furthermore I examine how Venezuelan citizens make sense of their decision to not migrate when confronted with the difficult political and economic crisis in the country.
Although mobility is materially and geographically grounded, it creates patterns and connections through migration flows, linked not necessarily to a fixed territory but to spatial networks, social relationships, and cultural practices surrounding both migration and stasis (Sager 2006, Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013). In the case of the Venezuelan exodus, both the populations that decide to migrate and the ones that remain in the country discursively make sense of their decisions and their relationships to mobility/immobility. In order to study the Venezuelan population ‘left behind’ and the relationship they hold to migration and stasis, the study qualitatively examines three individual’s written narratives concerning their ideologies surrounding their perspectives on the people that stay in Venezuela, as well as their migration aspirations and plans. Through their narratives the participants make sense of their positions as Venezuelan citizens that have stayed in the country, and their personal interpretations on mobility or lack of thereof.
Analyzing the experiences and thoughts of Venezuelan citizens that still live in the country despite the migratory exodus, helps us make sense of how both mobility and immobility might be conceptualized. The harsh socio-economic conditions facing Venezuelan citizens have made many of them involuntarily immobile (in the case of those who have no other options but to stay) or involuntarily mobile (in the case of those who feel no other option but to migrate). In these cases the discourse surrounding the choice of not migrating involves a variety of sense-making strategies, including framing themselves as “fighters”, “survivors”, people with “no choice” but to stay, people that have “an obligation” to fulfill to the country they “belong” to, etc.
Having the chance to present this research in Buenos Aires, a city with an ever-growing Venezuelan immigrant presence, would join together theory and praxis, tackling the emergent and single most important humanitarian crisis in the Latin American country. The analysis of non-immigrants’ perspectives on immobility, their migration aspirations and agency, and the migration imaginaries that affect their sense-making, facilitates us with understanding mobility as existing within social networks and transnational linkages, helping us understand the dialogic relationship between mobility and immobility. Furthermore, this study theorizes the discursive imaginaries that surround migration as a socially-constructed idea (Salazar 2011), as studying non-immigrant narratives enable us to understand the intricacies and complex entanglements of imaginations, spatialities, and meaning-making surrounding movement.
WORKS CITED
Glick Schiller, N., & Salazar, N. B. (2013). Regimes of mobility across the globe. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 39(2), 183-200.
Sager, T. (2006). Freedom as mobility: Implications of the distinction between actual and potential travelling. Mobilities, 1(3), 465-488.
Salazar, N. B. (2011). The power of imagination in transnational mobilities. Identities, 18(6), 576-598.
Country:
United States
Theme And Axes:
Semiotics and narratives studies
Semiotics of spatiality (geographies, territories, borders)
Institution:
University of South Florida
Mail:
beatriznieto@mail.usf.edu
Estado del abstract
Estado del abstract:
Accepted